The assassin crouched on all fours, looking around. The circle fluoresced brighter under his feet. His big, misshapen eyes found me. “Die.”
A bright yellow flash exploded from him and ran through the lines of the circle. The five magic sinks spun, absorbing it and became still.
“Die. Die, die, die.”
Each burst sent a fresh spike of fury and hate through me. I waited until the sinks stopped spinning. I had all the time in the world.
The assassin stared at me. “Release me.”
“Tell me your name.”
“Release me or I’ll eat your family.”
That’s what I liked about warped assassins. They were reasonable, pleasant people. Such deep thinkers.
“Tell me your name.”
“I’ll kill you and eat your guts while you scream.”
“Not in that order, you won’t.”
He charged my circle, clawing at it, his mouth gaping, his small, sharp teeth trying to scrape at the wall of magic. We were barely six inches apart, yet we might as well have been on different continents.
Outside, the emergency streetlamps came on.
The assassin had worn himself out and crouched on the floor again.
“You’re here because I let you come here,” I told him. “I told the soldiers outside to stay out of your way. I knew Benedict would send you or someone like you. I hoped he would come himself, but he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, does he?”
The assassin bared his teeth. “Whore.”
“Answer my questions and it will hurt less.”
The assassin grinned. “You sound like him.”
“But I’m not him. I didn’t look for you. I didn’t force you into the circle. You came here to kill me, my friends, and my family. You are a murderer.”
“Self-righteous bitch.”
He had retained more IQ points than Lawrence. He had a good vocabulary, and his reasoning ran deeper than the summoner’s “Kill that bitch because my bugs are hungry.” Explained why this one didn’t have a handler.
I raised my arms and concentrated. The circle around me began to spin, sending hair-thin chalk lines spiraling through the larger ring. The lines collided with the pattern around the warped, forming a new design in the circle’s matrix.
The assassin swiveled his head side to side, trying to keep track.
I sank a burst of power into the circle. The magic shot through the new lines like a spark running down a detonation cord. The assassin’s mind flared before me, a bright hot target. I zeroed in on it and struck.
With the right circle, even a weak mental mage could put pressure onto the target’s mind, and I was not weak.
The assassin shrieked. I gripped his consciousness with my power and squeezed.
To be beguiled, a person had to be capable of love, and no matter how deep that spark was buried, my magic would coax it into a bonfire. This inhuman creature was knitted from deep-seated hatred, and rage, and contempt for humans. For all of his regression, Lawrence had loved his swarm. The butcher loved nothing. Guilt, fear, or doubt never troubled him, and regret wasn’t a concept he understood. I couldn’t wrench him open by pulling one of the usual levers present in a human mind. He had none. His will was an impenetrable shell and his inhumanity gave him an extra layer of protection.
I wasn’t at my strongest. I was tired, but I didn’t need to beguile him. I just had to squeeze his mind open. The circle would do most of the work and it didn’t ask for anything complicated. It required raw power, so I reached deep inside myself and found some.
In the ring, the killer raged. Yellow radiance drenched the lines, saturating them. The magic sinks spun, siphoning it off. He had an insane reservoir of magic. His loathing battered me, wave after wave, relentless, his mind churning with rage. Wading through it was like trying to swim through waves carrying razor-sharp rocks. My emotional defenses shook. I gritted my teeth and squeezed him harder.
The two sinks closest to the butcher turned yellow, then orange, saturated to the brink. A normal mage would have stopped out of sheer self-preservation. Spending too much magic too quickly taxed the body, and if a mage exhausted all of their reserves, they lost consciousness. Some never woke up. But he had no capacity for self-preservation. He pounded and pounded against the circle, trying to shatter it, driven by pure rage.
The tide of psychic hatred drowned me. I could no longer keep my head above the water. His emotions coursed through me, threatening to tear me apart. My own reserves were running dry.
A faint crack appeared in the assassin’s will. Fear of being trapped and helpless. Finally.
Another magic sink turned orange and stopped spinning.
I gripped at the edges of the crack with my will and pushed.
The fourth sink froze. We were down to one.
He howled, throwing all of his power against the circle in a frenzied barrage.
The final magic sink stopped, saturated. The tide of his emotions swallowed me whole and I hung suspended, no longer sure where I ended and his fury began.
I couldn’t quit now. Runa deserved answers. Her brother deserved answers. Halle deserved a life. I would give them that.
The first two sinks collapsed. Magic tore out in twin geysers. My room cracked like a broken mirror. Chunks of wall and window hung motionless for a tortured moment and exploded outward. The roof vanished and the stars stared down at us, cold and indifferent. The entire wall facing the street collapsed. I glimpsed people running below.
The crack in the butcher’s mind widened. I could almost sense the creature beneath, a hateful, evil ball of spite.
The third sink burst. The floor under us fell apart. We hung in mid-air, held up by the power of the circle alone. In the bathroom, still safe behind the door, Shadow howled.
He would not win. He crawled into innocent people’s houses in the night and he murdered and took them from their beds. He would not take anyone else. He would not kill another mother, another daughter or sister. I would not let him.
I tore myself open and fed the last of my magic into the circle. His will cracked open like a walnut. Darkness clutched at the corners of my eyes. I fought it off and stared at the assassin cowering in the middle of the circle.
“Tell me your name.”
“Louie Graham.”
“Did you kill Sigourney Etterson?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Benedict De Lacy ordered it.”
“Did you kidnap Halle Etterson?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you take her?”
“To Diatheke.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is the lab where Cristal made you?”
“I don’t know.”
Damn it. He truly didn’t know.
This was why I had let him in. That was all I wanted, and I wouldn’t get it. Damn it!
“Do you know that what you did was wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you keep doing it? Did you ever think about leaving? Running away?”
He raised his head to look at me. “Why? Benedict doesn’t force me to do things. He lets me do things. I like to kill. I like to feed. I would kill you if I could and I would enjoy it.”
That was it. There was nothing more to ask. I pulled my power out of the circle. The last remaining sink—the fourth one must have shattered while I interrogated him—vomited magic to the sky. The circle faded slowly, collapsing. We fell to the ground, softly at first, then faster. I landed in a blanket stretched under me. The people who held it gently lowered me to the ground.